Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 12:16:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: silence


It seems to me that another Foucauldian work that connects to Pinter is
the "Language to Infinity" essay, with its problematic of discourse endlessly
self-reproducung itself to forestall death.  This, I would argue, is exactly
how speech functions in much of Pinter, as also in much of Beckett.  It is
those waiting for death -- or those for whom death waits -- that talk 
the most, endlessly repeating themselves.  Unlike the people in the
Arabian Nights, they have no stories to tell -- certainly not ones good
enough to win them the prize of life.  It is almost as if the self-reproducing
tapestry of speech was thought to have the power to make them invisible, 
to disguise them as not-themselves so that death, or the void, cannot 
recognize and claim them.  


-m